


Knock Me Off My Feet

by eleanor_lavish



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mild Kink, One Night Stands, Self-Discovery, Strong Female Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:48:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleanor_lavish/pseuds/eleanor_lavish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>On the days when Grant feels like a total loser, Susan always manages to push him more, harder, to pound him into the mats until the day he finally, finally flips her. She smiles up at him, fierce and proud, before sweeping his feet and pinning him to the mat with one arm across his throat. “Good job, Ward,” she says before she lets him up. He sits on the bench for the rest of practice, hunched over his rock-hard dick, watching her take down one guy after another. She’s the first girl he ever falls in love with, or at least the first he knows he wants.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knock Me Off My Feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toucanpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toucanpie/gifts).



> Thanks to Lynnmonster and Schuyler for the last-minute betas! <333

His parents don’t have the money to pay for karate class, but there’s a little dojo in the strip mall around the corner from the public library where Grant and his brother hide out after school. The library is better than home, where Sam could pop up any minute and make their lives miserable. Grant doesn’t even bother asking for lessons, but when the weather is nice he takes his books and sits on the bench by the window sometimes, watching the kids inside throw each other around and then help each other up, bowing and smiling. 

He makes it three months before anyone calls him on it. “Hey, kid,” he hears, and when he looks away from the window to the voice coming from the open doorway, it’s the young woman with the blond ponytail who co-teaches some of the younger classes. “You got some Matrix superpower where you can learn stuff just by watching?”

Grant hunches in on himself more, his cheeks red with embarrassment. “Sorry,” he stammers, shoving his library books in his backpack. “I just -”

“Why don’t you come in for a little while, let me see if you’ve managed to pick up anything useful.” Grant pauses for a minute, fighting his urge to flee. It’s not a bad idea, just to get a few pointers. “What’s your name, kid?” she asks.

“Grant. Ward,” he manages, and she smiles at him, sharp but not cruel. 

“Well Grant Ward, let’s see what you’ve got.” 

*

He learns her name is Susan, but in class they call her “Sempai.” She’s nineteen and a student at the local college, but her real passion is karate. She’s going for her black belt soon, and she thinks Grant has potential.

Miko, the Sensei, apparently doesn’t care that Grant doesn’t pay for his classes, if he even knows. Grant gets the idea that Susan takes care of the money stuff. He thinks of it as a gift, one of the best he’s ever been offered, and he makes sure never to miss a class, taking two or even three in a week. He’s not great at first and Susan doesn’t go easy on him. 

Susan doesn’t go easy on _anybody_.

She’s quiet and calm and can flip the 200-pound guy in his class over her shoulder. “Susan is here to remind you that size does not equal power,” Sensei says as she lets out a shout and Mario goes down hard. Grant watches, and learns.

Grant comes in with bruises sometimes, hidden in places his parents won’t see - high on his arms, his back, his thighs. Susan notices, her eyes tracking him as he shuffles into the corner and pulls off his sweatshirt. It makes Grant squirm, makes him feel ashamed - he’s not the smallest in the class, he’s tall and getting taller every year, he shouldn’t let this keep _happening_ , to himself or to his brother. 

On the days when Grant feels like a total loser, Susan always manages to push him more, harder, to pound him into the mats until the day he finally, finally flips her. She smiles up at him, fierce and proud, before sweeping his feet and pinning him to the mat with one arm across his throat. “Good job, Ward,” she says before she lets him up. He sits on the bench for the rest of practice, hunched over his rock-hard dick, watching her take down one guy after another. She’s the first girl he ever falls in love with, or at least the first he knows he wants.

*

By the time he gets to college, Grant’s done what his mom calls “grow into himself” and what Grant calls “finally getting the decent end of the puberty stick.” He’s still doing some karate, but he’s added weight training to that, and running track and, in the off-season, intramural rugby. It’s brutal and fast, a game where you have to be smart and tough and a little crazy to succeed.

He loves it.

There isn’t a formal rugby league, but all the small schools in New England have a team and they find ways to play, carpooling and crashing on floors. They do two games in a day - the men’s teams first because who the fuck cares about that, and the women’s teams headlining because that’s what everyone shows up for.

Grant loves playing rugby but not nearly as much as he loves watching _women’s rugby_ \- gorgeous girls with purple-streaked hair and tattoos on biceps bigger than Grant’s, cursing and bleeding and loving every minute of it.

He never dates them because mostly they date each other, but by his senior year Grant’s bedded (or been bedded by) nearly half of the women’s team at his school. He’s a mascot of sorts, and he’s doesn’t mind it one bit. There’s Gretchen, who likes to fuck Grant against the wall of the women’s bathroom in a seedy bar off-campus whenever they lose. And Jessie, who likes to pull Grant’s hair and laughs when he curses her out for it. There’s Monica and Jordan who only take him home when they’re fighting with each other - they usually make up halfway through and Grant ends up getting himself off just watching them together. There’s Dani, who gives amazing blowjobs and introduces Grant to the joy of coming with her finger up his ass, even though she only does it when she’s drunk and he’s drunker. And Christine, all-time world champion at the reverse cowgirl, who was so utterly unimpressed by Grant’s stamina the first time around that it took him three years to convince her to give him a second chance. The morning after he did she rolled over, pronounced him “not bad” and made him drive her to Denny’s for a hangover breakfast.

It’s weird, maybe, that he always walks around cocky the morning after, seeing as he ends up on the receiving end of enough “you can see yourself out, right?” conversations to make most guys a little self-conscious. But he also has some bruises on his hips that are a reminder of _exactly_ what a great night he had. Who cares that he doesn’t actually have a girlfriend?

*

He’s only fifteen months into his time at SHIELD when Grant ends up on the wrong end of an op, stuck in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Milan with Natasha fucking Romanov, who is currently choking a guy out with her _thighs_.

“Oh god,” is all Grant can manage when she finally flips her hair out of her face and stands up, brushing her hands on her skin-tight black pants. Grant doesn’t think the guy is dead, but… that guy totally looks dead.

“Gun,” she says shortly, snapping her fingers, and Grant fumbles his sidearm into her hand. Before he can even ask what she needs it for, she fires it twice over his left shoulder. He winces - his ears are going to ring for a few days, at least - and when he turns around there’s another hired gun crumpled on the floor. “Let’s go,” she says, and Grant follows her outside to a small, non-descript sports car. “I drive,” she tells him as he steps toward the driver’s side door. He stops short.

“Of course, sure, yeah,” he says, and Romanov rolls her eyes.

Romanov takes turns at breakneck speed and Grant calls in their information and a clean-up crew to the warehouse. Her eyes are firmly on the road ahead, but Grant can’t stop looking at Romanov’s _legs_. Her legs that possibly just _killed a guy_. Her legs that Grant had totally noticed before, because she’s gorgeous and he’s only human, but now he can’t stop… looking at them.

“See something you like?” Romanov asks, her voice sly and deep as she pushes the car into fourth. 

“No,” Grant says automatically. Her eyebrows go up. “I mean, yes, sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbles. Grant hasn’t babbled since basic, not even in front of beautiful women. Not even in front of beautiful women with _guns_. But Agent Romanov is… a legend.

They pull up in front of a gorgeous old hotel, stonework a century old and lush, green vines climbing the walls. It’s a hell of a lot nicer than the place Grant is shacked up in. “Come,” Romanov says, and Grant follows without thinking. The doorman doesn’t even blink at Grant’s blood-stained shirt which means the hotel is _definitely_ above his paygrade.

Romanov leads him down a short hall to a door that still needs an old-fashioned key to enter. Inside, it’s sunny and warm with a window overlooking the town below. Grant does a three-sixty and takes in the worn velvet cushions on the couch and paintings of wine fields on the walls. The bed is a four-poster carved from cedar. “This is really nice,” he manages, just as Romanov pulls her shirt over her head. “Oh _god_ ,” Grant says again, and Romanov smirks at him. 

“I think you should stop talking,” she says and slides her pants over her hips and down to the floor, stepping out of them. She’s not wearing anything underneath. “And I think I can figure out how to make that happen.” Grant almost drops to his knees right there. “Oh, I’m not standing up for this,” she tells him, and pushes him flat onto his back in the middle of the bed. Grant is already hard, his hips snapping up with a jolt as she straddles his lap. He’s still in his suit; she doesn’t seem to give a fuck. “You like these,” Romanov says, her hands coming up to cup her own breasts. 

“Yeah,” Grant says, wincing a little when she looks at him sharply. Shutting up, right.

“But not as much as these, I think.” She squeezes him with her magnificent thighs, hard enough to hurt, and Grant has never been more terrified or more turned on. Romanov tilts her head; she’s not smiling, but Grant gets the feeling she finds him interesting. 

It’s a heady feeling, one that gives him enough courage grin up at her. “I definitely like those.”

She moves lightning quick, her knees come down hard on the bed on either side of his head, her naked thighs pressed nearly to his throat. For one heart-stopping moment Grant is certain he’s going to die here, murdered by Natasha Romanov’s thighs. She’d probably cut up his body, dissolve the pieces in the bathtub and then order room service. Instead, her fingers slide into his hair. “Don’t make me regret this,” she says to him, tugging just hard enough to sting. She’s smirking again. “ _Ward,_ ” she says, and that is _definitely_ an order. 

Grant Ward is fucking fantastic at following orders.

She rides his face nearly silently, one hand still in his hair, the other grasping one of the bedposts. Her knees are tight around his ears and every time Grant sucks on her clit, they tremble. He’s dizzy, he can barely breathe, and all he can feel is Romanov, salt-slick and hot everywhere. But those trembling thighs are enough to make Grant feel like a god. If she squeezes any tighter he might actually die in this room, but he’ll die _happy_.

Grant is not inexperienced at eating girls out, even from this position. Hell, he once had Monica and Jordan both ride him at once - Jordan on his face and Monica on his dick - and still managed to make Jordan come, screaming. He can’t use his hands from this angle, but he trusts Romanov to put him exactly where she wants him, and lets his mouth do the work from there, flicking and pressing and sucking. He knows she’s close when her thighs tremble harder, grinding down onto his tongue again and again. She grits out a string of curses in Russian and Grant can taste a burst of sweetness as she comes.

When it’s over, Romanov falls to her back on the bed and stretches. “You can,” she tells him, her eyes flicking down to his tented trousers. Grant isn’t ashamed to admit that it takes him twelve seconds to come, once his hand’s on his dick. 

“That was -,” he starts, but she raises her eyebrow at him. “I should probably…”

Sixty seconds later, he’s fully dressed and back out in the hallway. 

They don’t work together again, but Romanov sometimes nods at him in the hallway when they happen to be in the same place. Grant calls it a win.

*

“You know, you calling me prickly is really a pot-kettle sort of situation,” Grant says. He and Hill are in the elevator together, just the two of them, since Grant’s new goddamned CO is apparently off recruiting more people for his fucking welcoming committee. Grant wouldn’t normally say this shit to a commanding officer, but he’s still smarting about being picked for Coulson’s new team of misfits and rejects. He doesn’t want a team. He doesn’t _need_ a team. And he definitely didn’t join SHIELD to babysit. 

Hill doesn’t blink. “You don’t like the assignment?”

“No,” Grant bites out. “I _don’t_ like the assignment. Like I said, I’m a specialist -”

Hill smiles at the elevator door, no humor at all in it. “You might find this surprising, but I don’t give a flying fuck.” Ward snorts. “What?”

“You sound just like him. Fury,” he clarifies when she shoots him a long look.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Hill says. Her eyes are dancing, and Grant is still mad, he’s still fucking _pissed off_ , but something about the way she’s watching him is making him feel a little too warm. He tries to get back on topic - something, anything to make her reconsider this ridiculous assignment.

“You really think I have no social skills? Because I’ll have you know that I’m extremely good with people.” 

It’s Maria’s turn to snort. “From my research I can tell you that no, you’re not.” She glances over at him again. “At least not at the parts that require talking. I’ve heard you’re not so bad at the not-talking parts.”

“You’ve researched the parts that don’t require talking?” he asks. 

Her smile this time is wide and sharp. “Oh, I have.”

“Ma’am,” he starts, and she looks at him like the next thing he says could either be brilliant or moronic and she’s betting on the latter. “When is the team expected to depart?”

“Oh-seven hundred.”

“Well, considering I’m already packed,” Grant says, rocking on his heels as the door slide open, “it looks like I’ll have plenty of free time in my quarters tonight. Maybe I can not-talk you into reconsidering.” He smiles at her, and Hill smirks back, shaking her head.

*

He gives Hill a 1-in-10 shot of actually showing up, so Grant is honestly surprised when there is a knock on the door of his room at twenty-three hundred. “Hey,” he says, but Hill just brushes past him. She’s still in uniform with a black, SHIELD-issue gym back thrown over her shoulder; Grant is down to jeans and a black tshirt, no shoes. He looks good and he knows it, but when she rakes her eyes over him, toes to the top of his head, he puffs his chest out a little without even meaning to. 

“At ease,” she says, smiling just a little. Grant runs his hand through his hair, smiling ruefully.

“You don’t have anything better to do?”

“Well,” she tilts her head a fraction, “it’s yet to be determined how good you are, so.”

“I’ll have you know, I’m very good,” Grant tells her. They’re closer now, close enough that Grant could touch her. He doesn’t.

She steps in close enough to lean in and murmur directly in his ear. “I’ll have you know, I’m better.”

“I bet you are,” he says, his pulse stuttering.

“I bet you are…,” she pauses expectantly.

“I bet you are, ma’am,” he corrects, and oh man, from the way she rips his shirt getting it off his head, this is going to turn out to be either a truly great idea or a truly terrible one.

*

Two hours later, he’s still not sure.

“Motherfuck,” he hisses and she slaps his hip, hard. Grant is laid out on his shitty government-issued bunk, one wrist still handcuffed to the bedpost. Grant’s run marathons before - this feels more like he just ran the Kentucky Derby.

Hill is pulling on her boots, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. There’s a bite mark behind her ear that he prays to god she doesn’t notice before Grant is at thirty-thousand feet. “I know you’re not thrilled about this assignment,” she says. 

“Understatement,” Grant mutters.

“I think you won’t hate it as much as you think you will,” she tells him. “There are a few perks.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Grant says sarcastically. 

Hill just stands up and shrugs. “Whatever, it’s your prerogative to be miserable. Just don’t let Coulson down.”

“Or you’ll have to come kick my ass?” he asks, grinning.

Hill shakes her head. “Oh, he won’t need me to kick your ass.” She walks to the door, and Grant leans up on one elbow. 

“Hey, you got the key to these?” he asks, rattling the handcuffs against the metal bedframe.

“I do,” she says with a grin, and leaves the room without a glance back.

*

There are indeed a lot of perks about being on Coulson’s team, annoying trainees aside, but one he never thought he’d have is hours alone in a hotel room with Melinda May, the fucking _Cavalry_ , sweating and cursing as she holds him down with one hand at his throat and the other on his dick. “Not yet,” she tells him and he keens. It’s not their first time - they’ve done this more times than Grant can count ( _twelve, they’ve done this twelve times_ ) and it’s always great, but this is… unexpected. She’s still mostly dressed while Grant is mostly not, his shirt lost across the room, his pants twisted around his ankles. His hands are fisted in the bedspread because she told him not to touch - not her, not himself. Truth be told, it’s killing him.

It’s been a long fucking day at the end of a long fucking week. Grant hasn’t slept in nearly two days but he’s wired, jacked up on adrenaline and a lingering panic. This morning, Fitz came closer than he ever should have to getting his brains splattered across the streets of Minneapolis by a guy who Coulson swears is a _friendly_. (Coulson’s idea of friendlies sometimes leave a lot to be desired.) They’re all a little battered and a lot exhausted. Grant is nursing a wicked bruise on his thigh. May is probably nursing them all over, since she’s the one who managed to take the guy down. 

Two hours ago, they were finally finished debriefing in the drab hotel conference room. Forty-five minutes ago, May had found Grant on the treadmill in the hotel gym after he’d tried and failed to get some shut eye. It’s a problem he’s had after an op before, the adrenaline and the exhaustion fighting each other to the point where Grant feels both wired and hollow. May had dragged him to her room and Grant was ready for something fast and hot to burn it all off, something where they’d have to come up with an excuse for how a lamp ended up broken (again). Instead, he’s been on the edge for what seems like an eternity.

“May,” he pants, and her hand doesn’t speed up or slow down, jerking him off in slow, easy strokes. He calls her ‘May’, except when he slips up and calls her ‘Ma’am’. She doesn’t ever want to talk, and Grant’s learned how to interpret her eyebrows pretty well - come here, stay there, fuck me, go fuck yourself. They’re expressive eyebrows. Right now, they’re focused, unamused, her pupils blown just wide enough that he knows she’s into this, into making him beg for it. “May, please,” he says, testing it out. Her hand doesn’t speed up, but her breathing does, just a fraction. 

“You trust me?” she asks, and Grant doesn’t hesitate when he nods because he does - he trusts her with things a whole hell of a lot more important than his dick. She takes her hand away slowly and slides down the bed. 

Grant does _not_ whimper, but he has to bite his lip to make sure he doesn’t. “May,” he pleads.

Grant hears the snick of a bottle opening, and when he looks down, May is closing the top on the travel-sized bottle of hand lotion that she’s been using to help slowly drive Grant insane. But this time her hand doesn’t go to his dick. She slides small, slick fingers over Grant’s balls and back, nudging his thighs open with her arm. Grant tenses up - he’s seriously never done this sober, and right now he’s feeling intensely focused, like he’ll be able to remember every second of this if he’s ever interrogated about it. “Trust me,” she says again and Grant relaxes a fraction at time as she presses her finger against him, not inside, just _there_. “Ward,” she says and it’s softer, almost gentle. It’s not a command but Grant’s body treats it like one, fully relaxing in one fell swoop.

“Do it,” he says, and her eyebrows are bemused but she pushes inside slowly. Her fingers are small enough that with one it barely burns; all Grant can feel is the tingling along his spine as she fucks into him, like an itch he can’t scratch. He doesn’t feel as hollow anymore, the ache in his chest dissipating with every rabbit-fast heartbeat. “More,” he says, and May’s eyebrows are slightly chiding. 

“Soon,” she says. “Want you to be ready for it.”

“Ready for what?” he manages, even though his hips are canting up without his permission, fingers pulling so hard at the cheap bedspread that it’s liable to tear. She reaches up with her other hand to scratch lightly over his balls and Grant curses loud enough to be heard in the hallway. May slaps him hard in the thigh, glaring. Grant glares back. “That was _your fault_ ,” he hisses. Her reply is to pull her finger out of Grant’s ass and to push back in with two, the stretch burning just enough to pull Grant back from the edge. 

She goes deep, deeper than before, and Grant’s legs suddenly jerk, his whole spine lighting up like a goddamn Christmas tree as her fingers drag over what has got to be Grant’s prostate. “Oh, holy fuck,” he manages, and May’s eyebrows are smug. She doesn’t move her fingers away for longer than a second at a time, sliding over the same spot over and over until Grant is thrumming, every muscle in his body tense to keep from thrashing, from crying out again. He’s so focused, so intent on riding the high of it that he almost doesn’t hear her.

“Grant,” May says, her voice low and a little harsh. “Touch yourself.”

“I’ll come,” he tells her because he’s so close, and he doesn’t know what she wants.

“I know,” she tells him, “come on.”

Grant’s hand flies to his dick and he jerks himself off in punishing strokes, May meeting him thrust for thrust. “Come on, come for me,” she says and Grant can’t hold back anymore, can’t keep from coming so hard he shakes all the way up to his shoulders. May’s fingers fuck him through it, only slipping free when Grant’s hand falls back to the bed. She wipes them on the cheap fabric and leans back on her knees. 

“I think I’m dead,” Grant mumbles, or tries to around the cotton in his head. 

“Told you to trust me,” she says, and Grant manages a weak laugh. She slides off the bed and heads to the bathroom. Grant hears the water running but he’s still floating, hazy. He’s heavy everywhere - his arms, his legs, each finger holding him down to the mattress. It’s the kind of weight that usually only comes with half a bottle of Jack Daniels. He closes his eyes for a moment and May is suddenly back, pressing a warm washcloth into his hand. “I’m heading back to the bus,” she says. “I set your alarm for three hours - get some sleep.”

“But you didn’t -” he says, startlingly embarrassed to have to point it out. “I didn’t -”

“It’s okay,” May says with a ghost of a smile. “You’ll owe me one.”

“Okay,” Grant says, feeling something fundamental shift in his chest, something terrifying and settling all at once. “Yeah, next time.” 

She doesn’t kiss him - they don’t, usually - but she runs her fingers through his hair, smoothing it over his forehead before she straightens up her own clothes. “Sleep,” she orders him and slips out the door. Grant lays there, boneless and sated, and thinks he should probably worry about this, about the subtle shift in whatever he and May are doing that makes Melinda May give a fuck about whether or not Grant Ward is getting his rocks off. 

But he leaves the worrying to people like Coulson. Grant is there to keep his team safe, and to follow orders.

He sleeps.


End file.
